cross country

Thursday. The final day of our week in the mountains. In the morning we had the “individual race”, men over 5k, women over 3k, on the loops below the hotel.

Originally, I was scheduled to be a “race official”, but I managed to reorganize the logistics plan, and free up a place for myself to race.

Conditions had changed a lot. There was a lot of fresh snow. I waxed my skis for Classic Skiing and set out to do a reconnaissance run, which doubled as “track preparation”. If you look carefully on the Strava map, you can see a place where I lost the course. It was difficult. At that point, there was just trees and fresh snow, and I had to remember how the 5k loop continued, and I made a mistake.

I realized it soon enough and backtracked.

Veronika did a similar prep round for the 3k loop.

Then it was time to race. I was the fifth guy to start (at 30 second intervals) and in the first turn, I passed the guy in front of me. After that, I was alone. It was pretty hard, but at least I had put on the good wax. Heart rate close to 180bpm on some of the climbing intervals.

I came in fourth.

In the afternoon, there was the team steeple chase run. We set out a flat track of 500m in one direction, 1k total. I manned the turning point and took pictures. Each team consisted of four skiers, and each team member skied 1k.

After the races, we hiked to Ovcarna for a final few drinks in one of the huts there.

In the evening, we had the prize ceremony. On Friday morning, we hiked to Ovcarna, boarded the bus and drove back to Brno. Travel/rest day. The travel was only 2 hours.

Romana had to go to Ovcarna with one of the girls who was ill and was going to be picked up by her father, so I was responsible for slow, fast and intermediate groups.

I decided to have them go back and forth between the Praded junction and Svycarna. Conditions on Praded mountain were pretty bad. It was very windy and snowing, so visibility was pretty low. Most of the segment was shielded by trees though, so that was pretty OK.

I skied up to the junction with the fastest girls, then told them to do Svycarna and back to the junction twice. Then I returned to pick up the intermediates. I sent them off behind the fast girls, telling them to go to Svycarna and back to the junction, and turn around on the second loop when they meet the fast girls. I skied down Praded mountain again to meet the slow ones, which had broken up in two groups. So I sent Dominik and Vitek to Svycarna and back, then returned to meet the slowest ones. Robin and Tomasek. I told them to go until they meet me, then return.

Then I set off to chase the fastest girls.

Conditions were getting worse, so I was happy to send Robin and Tomasek home, but slightly worried about them going through the blizzard.

I am adding a few pictures from other days, just to capture the atmosphere.

In the afternoon, we ran on the loops close to the hotel. I did a 5km, then 2x a 3km.

Tuesday was predicted to be the brightest day of the week, so a good day to do a long run. We arranged with the Hotel to move our lunch time out to past two pm and got going. This 26km run is voluntary, and so I had only three girls with me, Iva, Lenka and Sasa.

While we were on our tour to the Pass of Cervena Hora (Cervenohorske Sedlo), the “slower” group skied up to the top of Praded mountain. They took this great picture:

We reached Cervenohorske Sedlo in under two hours. At this point, the main road crosses the mountains and we saw the first cars in a few days:

We had tea and soup at the hut and then turned around for the ski back. We were delighted to see some of the sights.

We continued past Svycarna, then returned. The climb to Svycarna was long and steep, so we took a rest break with some tea inside the Svycarna hut.

In the afternoon, I took the girls to the straight part between the Hotel and Ovcarna, where we did some technical exercises to improve our skating technique. Then we returned to the hotel and hit the loops that were prepared there. These are great training loops. You can choose 2, 3, 4, and 5 km loops (which are in reality a bit shorter than their names suggest). We did a 5km loop with all the girls, and then we did a 5km with the fastest of the girls.

Our friends from four rowing clubs. CVK Brno (that’s us) with Junior girls, my sons and one friend. SVK Breclav with their Junior girls. USK Pardubice (a student rowing club) with a few students, and our friend Veronica from Perun Ostrava. Basically a bunch of masters who like to row together. Two of them happen to be coaching Junior girls, so they took them.

The bus picked us up at 11 am and we arrived at Ovčárna by 1:30. That is the bus that brought us, in the background.

The hike to our hotel Kurzovní was short. Our club’s president traveled in the snow plow with the luggage (and with a happy dog).

Our hotel:

After checking in, the president and I went for a short cross country run. He showed me that he is faster on skis than I, but I blamed part of it on Saturday’s ball (we were home a few hours after midnight) and Saturday’s steady State erg.

A lot of snowfall last night, and I didn’t want to clear my “Olympic Oval” of snow again, so instead of the ice skates, I took the XC skis to the lake today. We were Romana, Dominik, and myself. Son Dominik had hockey skates and called a few rowing friends of his age. Romana and myself had X country skis.

At the rowing club, we found that a few more rowers had the same idea! And because Ludek had a phone, I have a few pictures. I think they tell the story pretty well. It was great.

The skiing was great. It was a bit slower and a bit heavier than on prepared tracks, but it was fun to run where I normally row.

Going back and crossing the lake, I even felt a bit disoriented, because I didn’t have the normal “looking back” view that we rowers are used to. We look at where we come from, and check where we are going only occasionally.

After that we had a tea party at the club house and watched biathlon together.

Looking at the summary in SportTracks, I think it was a pretty good steady state workout.

I have spent the entire past week doing cross-country skiing in Paseky nad Jizerou. A morning “hard” (can’t call it fast, really) workout alone, and an afternoon “slow” workout with either my sister and/or Romana and the girls rowing team. Only on Monday and Wednesday I had to revert to one session a day. On Monday because I had to drive to Prague to pick up my sister. On Wednesday because the fourth day was planned as a “recovery” day.

Over 10 hours of cross-country skiing in 5 days, 11 hours if you count Sunday as well.

Here are two typical runs. It’s a pity that Google Earth doesn’t have “winter” pictures:

Heart rate and elevation for the “hard” runs. I guess this all qualifies as extensive endurance workouts, but as the terrain comes and there are shorter and longer climbs, as well as descents, I would say there is an “interval” element to it as well. Hard to qualify, but definitely good training effort and a lot of fun.

The Friday morning was an extremely short round. I had to dial in to an ad hoc urgent meeting just before the run and didn’t have more time before the next ad hoc urgent meeting started … Sometimes work can’t wait.

Here are a few pictures I made yesterday and on Thursday:

A very nice week. Now everything hurts. Today we drove home and I relax. Tomorrow is a travel day again. Another business trip. 🙁